Today, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke before the World Health Assembly on the topic of of the LGBT community’s access to healthcare around the world. Echoing State Secretary Hillary Clinton’s remarks last year at the United Nations, Sebelius said that “everyone has a basic right” to healthcare and barriers that discriminate against people for their sexual orientation or gender identity must be broken down:
SEBELIUS: This can take the form of outright discrimination, like when people are given substandard care or are turned away from a hospital or local clinic because they happen to be lesbian or gay.
Often, the barriers are more subtle, like when doctors and nurses don’t take the time to understand the health needs of their LGBT patients
In other cases, health care providers violate patient confidentiality and disclose the sexual orientation of their LGBT patients. This can put LGBT people who are not “out” in their communities, at risk of discrimination, social exclusion, physical violence, or even death. And it leads many LGBT people to risk traveling to distant care facilities in order to prevent this from happening.
Because of this, LGBT populations are often invisible and unacknowledged. But they are there, in considerable numbers, in every country in the world.
Sebelius also acknowledged that she’s all too familiar with these barriers “because they still exist in my own country.”
Thanks to a provision of the Affordable Care Act, 16 million consumers and businesses are expected to receive about $1.3 billion in rebates from health insurance companies, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The medical loss ratio rule requires insurers to spend at least 80 to 85 percent of premiums on patient care; if not, then the companies owe rebates to their customers. As Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explains, “We want to know that most of what we are paying for is for health care, not advertising, executive bonuses or overhead. It’s pretty simple: we want to get a good value for our premium dollars.”
The Kaiser estimates show that rebates add up to $541 million in the large employer market, $377 million in the small business market, and $426 million for those buying insurance on their own. Roughly one-third of people nationally who bought individual insurance plans can expect a rebate, but the percent of consumers expecting rebates ranges from almost zero in some states to 86 percent in Oklahoma and 92 percent in Texas. “This study shows that asking insurance companies to put more of their premium dollar towards patient care rather than administration and profits is not only popular but also effective,” said Kaiser President and CEO Drew Altman.
Insurance brokers unsuccessfully tried to block this regulation, and Florida officials asked the federal government for less stringent requirements that would have likely reduced the rebate amounts in that state. But if this rule had gone into place in 2010, 15 million people would have seen $2 billion in rebates that year.
Catholics Protest Sebelius Over Contraception Rule At College That Offers Birth Control |
The Cardinal Newman Society, a conservative Catholic organization focused on college students, is protesting Georgetown University’s decision to invite Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to give the commencement address for the college’s Public Policy Institute. In a petition, the society president Patrick Riley, writes that it is “scandalous and outrageous” that Georgetown invited Sebelius, “a publicly ‘pro-choice’ Catholic who is most responsible for the Obama administration’s effort to restrict the Constitution’s first freedom — the right to free exercise of religion.” Catholic leaders have consistently attacked the Obama administration’s new regulations that will expand access to contraception. However, Georgetown President John DeGioia announced that the college will continue to provide birth control coverage for its employees.
Conservative media outlets aredownrightgleeful over a recent exchange between Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius that culminates with Sebelius stating that she did not receive a legal memo addressing whether the Obama Administration’s recent effort to expand access to contraception is unconstitutional.
GOWDY: When you say you balance things, can you understand why I might be seeking a constitutional balancing instead of any other kind?
SEBELIUS: I do, sir, and I defer to our lawyers to give me good advice on the Constitution. I do not pretend to be a constitutional lawyer.
GOWDY: Is there a legal memo that you relied on?
SEBELIUS: I relied on discussions.
GOWDY: At least when Attorney General Holder made his recess appointments, there was a legal memo that he relied on. Is there one you can share with us?
SEBELIUS: Attorney General Holder clearly runs the Justice Department and lives in a world of legal memos.
Watch it:
Gowdy, who, among other things, appears confused about which executive branch official has the power to make recess appointments, seems quite proud of the fact that he made Sebelius admit that she never received a written document explaining why the Constitution permits regulations ensuring that working women will be able to access birth control — and that she instead relied on oral conversations with attorneys. There’s a very good reason why Sebelius would not need such a memo, however. The primary conservative argument against contraceptive access — that allowing it somehow violates the constitutional rights of religious groups who object to contraception — is completely meritless and hardly requires a lengthy memo. I recently dismissed it in just two paragraphs, for example:
There is nothing in the Constitution saying that a person does not have to comply with the law simply because they object to it — if this were actually true, anyone could immunize themselves from paying taxes simply by claiming a moral objection to doing so. Nor does the Constitution allow people to violate the law simply because they have a religious objection to it.
The seminal Supreme Court opinion establishing this point was written by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia — who, coincidentally, is Catholic. Scalia explains that “the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a ‘valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).’” In other words, so long as a law does not single out Catholics (or any other faith) for inferior treatment, the law applies universally to everyone.
It would be a tremendous waste of limited resources to have the government employ armies of lawyers whose job is to anticipate every false legal argument that might be thrown against a new regulation and draft memos explaining why those false theories shouldn’t prevent the regulation from being implemented. Perhaps Mr. Gowdy thinks it would be a good use of the American people’s taxes to create such a stimulus program for government lawyers, but there are much better ways for America to spent its money.
On a more serious note, however, there is something very ominous about Gowdy’s exchange with Sebelius. The Constitutional case against contraceptive access is meritless, and any competent lawyer would tell Sebelius as much in just a few sentences. The same, however, can also be said about the case against the Affordable Care Act. If the Supreme Court strikes down health reform, it will send a clear message to every judge in the country that the law does not apply any more — at least when enough conservative officials object to the law.
In other words, Sebelius may need to hire an army of rabidly conservative lawyers just to tell her which frivolous legal arguments she must heed regardless of the fact that they have no basis in the Constitution.
Over 100 Health Groups Call For Better Chronic Health Care Coverage |
One hundred and four health organizations sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius yesterday calling for increased coverage of treatment for chronic illnesses. The letter urged Sebelius to revise the Essential Health Benefits (EHB) prescription standard to cover more drugs for patients who may not respond to one form of treatment. Currently, EHB plans allow for coverage of one drug in each “theraputic category,” a level the signatories called “wholly inadequate.” Instead, the groups asked for treatments to be covered if they are recommended by medical professionals and in an “otherwise covered category,” one that is not completely excluded from coverage. The letter also called for federal intervention to ensure states participate in the exchange programs, noting that some Governors, like Florida’s Rick Scott (R), have refused to participate at all in the process of forming exchanges.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has refused to implement the Affordable Care Act in his state, claiming, “It’s not the law of the land. I don’t believe it will ever be the law of the land.” If the law is upheld by the Supreme Court, however, Scott could end up with no say in the matter.
Yesterday in Miami, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made it clear that Florida would have to abide by the law and form a health insurance exchange, which would allow Floridians to shop around for insurance plans, by 2014. If Florida does not take action to form an exchange by then, Sebelius promised, the federal government will do it for them:
“What we have said to states is: ‘[What] we need to know at the beginning of 2013 is whether or not you intend to do this,’” she explains. “We are responsible in the law for putting together a federal exchange for Floridians.”
State lawmakers have been warned that if they fail to follow the law, the federal government will step in and create an exchange for them.
“They will have a deadline to meet if they choose not to move ahead with the state based exchange,” Sebelius says. “We will launch an enrollment process and a federal exchange for the citizens of Florida.”
Scott has made no secret of his disdain for the law, even as it offers much-needed aid for the state and its residents. Rather than accept grant money to pay for disease prevention and other programs, Scott turned the money down supposedly on principle. (He did, however, accept $2.5 million for abstinence-only sex education.) Meanwhile, Florida has the third-highest rate of uninsured residents in the nation and three of the ten highest spending metropolitan areas, on top of a $3.7 billion budget deficit.
Sebelius noted that, if the federal government established an exchange in 2014, grants would start coming into the state. Until then, however, the federal government “cannot put the services together that they are turning down…unfortunately, it’s the most underserved Floridians that are the victims of that choice.” That could change within two years, but that is too long a wait for many.
Michele Bachmann argued last night that the Obama administration could institute a one-child policy under the Affordable Care Act. Appearing on Glenn Beck’s online television show Real News From The Blaze, Bachmann launched into a long monologue on why she thinks the health care reform law could negatively impact women and explained that “the federal government will only pay for one baby to be born in the hospital per family.”
When anchor Amy Holmes pressed her on that point, she quickly backed away from singling out the Obama administration, and instead talked of a generic “health care dictator” who may institute such policies:
BACHMANN: Women have a lot to lose under Obamacare If you want to go into specifics, what the government gives, the government can take away. It certainly isn’t beyond the pale to think, in light of Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services Secretary — she said that it’s important that we have contraceptives because that prevents pregnancy, and pregnancy is more expensive to the federal government. Going with that logic, according to our own Health and Human Services Secretary, it isn’t far-fetched to think that the President of the United States could say ‘we need to save health care expenses — the federal government will only pay for one baby to be born in the hospital per family, or two babies to be born per family.’ That could happen. We think it couldn’t?”
ACA Ends Lifetime Limits For 105 Million Americans | At least 105 million Americans have benefited from a provision in the Affordable Care Act that eliminates lifetime limits on health benefits, a report released by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finds. Although some plans already provided coverage without dollar limits on lifetime benefits, millions of Americans were enrolled in programs that did not. In fact, in 2009, 89 percent of people covered under individually purchased health insurance plans had a lifetime limit on their benefits, while 59 percent of all workers covered by their employer’s health plan had some limit placed on their benefits. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates 39.5 million women and 27.8 million children will benefit from the changes:
After the White House announced a rule mandating employers to offer contraception as part of their health insurance plans, officials added an accommodation permitting religiously affiliated institutions to opt out of the requirement. Under the rule, insurance companies would offer the benefit directly to the employee. That way, all women would have access to birth control, institutions avoid compromising their moral beliefs and insurance companies could avoid the costs of unintended pregnancies or medical complications.
But when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explained the economics of expanding access to birth control to Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) at a House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday, the Congressman was shocked:
MURPHY: So you’re saying by not having babies born, we’re going to save money on health care?
SEBELIUS: Providing contraception as a critical preventive health benefit for women and for their children reduces health care.
MURPHY: Not having babies born is a critical benefit? This is absolutely amazing to me.
In an interview with Fox News about his confrontation with Sebelius, Murphy disagreed with Sebelius’ assessment:
MURPHY: When Secretary Sebelius said that basically pregnancy is an expense, that means that by not having to pay for prenatal care and not having to pay for labor and delivery or the pediatric costs of raising a child, they figured they could save a lot of money. And it really baffled me how we were going to expect to pay for health care by not having babies. I thought that was one of the points of providing health care for women. And quite frankly it doesn’t make sense financially.
Watch:
The “financial” logic is sound. A study from 2000 estimated that it costs employers 15 to 17 percent more to not provide contraceptive coverage to employees than it would if the insurance coverage included the benefit. This higher spending accounts for the direct medical costs of a pregnancy and indirect expenses like employee absence and reduced productivity.
Republicans were not willing to let go of the contraception debate during this morning’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The GOP misconstrued the administration’s contraception coverage requirement as an attack on religious liberty and argued that Catholic institutions would be required to offer birth control. During a particularly strange exchange, Rep. Mike Burgess (R-TX) even asked Sebelius if she supports requiring sterilization as a condition of citizenship:
BURGESS: If a state required sterilization as a condition of citizenship, would you be required to do that on the federal level?
SEBELIUS: Sir, I’m not going to answer that question.
Today, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke before the World Health Assembly on the topic of of the LGBT community’s access to healthcare around the world. Echoing State Secretary Hillary Clinton’s remarks last year at the United Nations, Sebelius said that “everyone has a basic right” to healthcare and barriers that discriminate against people for their sexual orientation or gender identity must be broken down:
Thanks to a provision of the Affordable Care Act, 
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has refused to implement the Affordable Care Act in his state, 
Michele Bachmann 
After the White House announced a rule mandating employers to offer contraception as part of their health insurance plans, officials 
